Letting Go

by Donna Schoenkopf

The dogs jumped up from their cool spots on my concrete floor and ran to see who had driven up to my house.

It was Neighbor Jim.

It’s a big deal to have someone come to Chigger Lake unannounced. Being out in the boonies means somebody really wants to see you about something.

So I opened the back door and saw that Neighbor Jim had a wry smile on his face. He asked, “Do you smell smoke?”

Hmmmm. Now that he’d mentioned it, I did, and as I looked down the driveway I could see wisps of it through the trees.

There was a fire in Orval’s field, he told me. That made me jump. Orval was my neighbor and not only might he be in danger, but I might be as well. Rosie the Cat might be in danger, too. She had AGAIN run away from home when my last house guests came to spend the night. She hung out in Orval’s workshop when she decided things were too hot for her at home. It always takes weeks to get her back. It means driving or walking over there every day. Calling her through the woods until I hear her meow, putting food in her bowl, standing far enough away to make her comfortable about coming up to the bowl and FINALLY managing to get her confidence enough to gently pick her up and slide her into the pet carrier to take her home again. It’s a pain in the ass, but I love her.

And now ... if she thought things were hot at home ... hoo boy.

“Now, calm down,” Jim said. Again with that wry smile on his face. He told me there was no emergency. This wasn’t a big deal. He explained that the trees were too green to ignite. Nothing would happen except the dry leaves on the ground would burn and then the fire would die out. Unless we got some wind.

He wanted to know if Neighbor Dave was home. No, I didn’t think so. So he opened his car door and Sally, his dog, jumped in and he shooed her away, and then I hopped in and we drove over to Dave’s to see if the fire was encroaching on his property.

(Neighbor Jim is a really good neighbor to have around.)

Neighbor Jim’s phone rang as we were driving. “They’re harvesting his organs at 4:00 today,” he said into the phone.

Someone has died, I thought. None of my business. Too bad, though.

But when he hung up he asked if I knew what had happened to our neighbor.

No. Which neighbor?

And then he told me the horrible news.

I feel really funny writing about this. I feel like Truman Capote ratting out all his friends in his writing and getting everyone mad at him because he used his relationships with them to sell his books.

But what I am about to tell you needs to be said because I can’t stop thinking about him and his family and his dog.

Our neighbor, I shall call him Randy, had shot and killed himself the night before.

Unlike Truman Capote, I shall not give you the details. Those are hearsay anyway and I shall leave well enough alone.

But I will tell you of my relationship with him.

I first made his acquaintance when I got stuck on a huge mound of chunky ice the winter before last. The snow and ice clearing guy had scraped all the frozen stuff off the highway, but when he did, it ended up blocking our county road and I couldn’t get over it to get onto Killer Highway 177. I saw a set of tire tracks making it over that ice pile and decided I’d go for it, too, but I drive a small car and it must have been a pickup that left those tracks because I got halfway over the mound and found myself completely stuck.

I got out and who should drive up but Randy in his pickup with his kids. He was taking them to school.

He was new in the neighborhood. He and his family had moved into the trailer down the road. They had a bunch of puppies which were now happily running around, getting underfoot.

I asked him if he could help me and he got out grumpily and quickly bounced my car up and down by pushing on the hood while I put it into reverse and gunned the engine. I was free in no time. I thanked him profusely and that’s the last I saw of him for quite a while.

But I saw his kids more often.

I would see them from time to time as I drove past their trailer. They often played outside and had some little tables and chairs and toys that they had scattered on the lawn. We’d always wave.

The first time the children and I talked face-to-face was when they walked down my driveway, the three of them, and knocked on my back door.

There they stood in a row with smiles on their faces, as cute as buttons, and told me they were selling raffle tickets for their school. There are only six homes in our neighborhood, so selling raffle tickets is not easy. Sure, I’d buy some. I invited them in and we introduced ourselves and I bought a couple of tickets and we talked about things for a little bit and then they said good-bye and walked back home. They were awfully sweet.

My relationship with Randy’s kids grew into a friendly one. I began to see Randy more often. I joked with him and teased a little. He would sometimes get an inkling of a smile somewhere behind his eyes. I felt like he needed a friend, but he wasn’t easy to get to know, so I didn’t push it.

A couple of months back, when the tornado struck, the whole family—except for mom, who was at work—hurried over to Neighbor Steve’s for the comfort of being with other people, and when everything was clear tornado-wise I took the kids back to my house and we all ate pie. That’s when they asked me if they could fish in my pond. Absolutely you can, I told them, but make sure I’m home first. (I had visions of snake bites or drowning. I needed to make sure they’d make it out alive. Hey. It’s like that in the country.)

The family had financial problems. Randy’s wife worked at the hospital. He wasn’t working. Things were tight for them. I’m sure they were stressed to the breaking point. I know the feeling.

Randy had a female dog. She had been one of the puppies that had gotten underfoot when I was stuck on that ice mound. She had a litter of pups and my dog, Diego, carried one of the newborns back to my house and played with it until it died. I felt awful and went to Randy’s house to apologize and offer to get her spayed so there wouldn’t be the problem of puppies anymore. AND, to sweeten the deal, I told him I would personally take the pups to Kmart to give them away. (He had told me earlier that he dreaded doing it.) He said sure, he didn’t care. I could see that he was relieved about having one of life’s problems taken care of.

He’s dead now.

He let go.

I went over to the trailer this morning to see if the family had come home. I pulled up behind his pickup and saw a new decal on his back window. It was his daughter’s name. I had stuck a note for them in the front door two days earlier. It was still there. I had also come to check on the new doberman Randy had bought his wife. He was about three months old. The fact that he bought, BOUGHT! filled me with guilt, because their dog was living now with me. They had so little as it was. But, the kids had told me a couple of weeks earlier, their mom had always wanted a doberman and their dad wanted to please her.

I looked at the dog sitting forlornly in his cage. I had brought water and a bunch of dry dog food in a large pot in case he needed it.

I got out of my car and he leaped with joy to see me and whined loudly and pitifully. He tried to wedge his way out of the cage through a bent place in the wire. He was desperate to get out, to be with me, to have human company. It had been three days since anyone had been home. His food dish was empty, nothing but dirt in the bottom of the bowl. His water bucket had water in it, but it was coated with a layer of dust and there was dirt on the bottom. I went back to the car and got the food, walked over to the cage, and squeezed the pot in through the gate of the cage, afraid he’d get past me and make a run for it. He gobbled it down. I got the water and poured it through the chain links into the bucket.

I looked at the other trailer behind their house. I’ll go there later in the morning and see if they can help with the dog until the family comes back, I thought.

It was almost unbearable standing in their front yard. I thought of the children and their mother and the lonesome dog. I thought about how they hadn’t come back home—that it was too much pain and fear to deal with. I thought of how confused they were about what to do next. Would they just walk away from the whole thing and try to put their lives back together somewhere else?

I thought of Randy and his short life.

I thought about how he told me the day of the tornado about his faith in God and how I had thoughtlessly replied that I had lost my own faith. He answered that actually he swung between belief and disbelief. It occurred to me that I might be to blame for stripping him of his faith by my offhand remark, leaving him with nothing in his hour of need. The weight of that guilt smothered me, and I quickly thought of my sister’s words long ago. She told me that I wasn’t the reason for everything in the universe. That I should get over myself.

And then I thought about Rosie hiding out at Orval’s. I thought of the burned and melted pet carrier I saw yesterday next to the workshop. I thought about letting her go and not trying to bring her home. I thought about how she always goes to Orval’s when she feels scared and finds refuge in his workshop among the tractors and tools.

I thought about how sometimes we just ... must ... let ... it ... go.

It’s always, always sad.

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